Mother's United For Peace

Advice From My Grandfather

2010-10-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

I am a product of the 60‘s...a flower child...if you will...most of my childhood and all of my adolescence took place with the Vietnam War as its back drop. The Vietnam War is etched into my psyche...it colored every experience... high school friends who worried about being drafted, heated debates at school, those who were drafted and came home messed up and those who never came home.

Every Sunday our family would pile into the car and drive 30-minutes to my Grandparents beach home in San Clemente. Their home located on the shoreline cliffs was a few minutes walk to the beach. I fondly remember Sunday dinners in San Clemente. The adults had spirited and intellectual discussions revolving around politics, religion, and the war. Mostly I just listened to my father, older brother and grandfather rationally debate the war. We could be ‘rational‘; after all we were in sunny southern California...and Vietnam was far away. My older brother was strongly encouraged to go to college...men in college were not drafted. An impressionable teenager, I watched the evening news and heard the mounting ‘causality’ reports. I picked up my parents copies of ‘Life’ and ‘Time’ Magazine and stared at the horrific images of war. I could not image how humans could be so barbaric to one another. I asked my parents, ‘why’...My father who had served in the Korean War was bitter and told me it was because ‘we need a good war to stimulate the economy’...My paternal grandfather, Harry L. Williams, was a wise and thoughtful man who I adored. He was a philosopher and a minister. He was a voracious reader. His library shelves were packed with books of every type...religious, political, and historical. He must know the answer...I thought. When I asked my Grandfather 'why'...he gave me the standard answer...the baby food that the government was feeding the American people...at the time there was a political theory, called the ‘domino-theory of Communist Expansion’. Basically the argument for war was, if we don’t stop them now ‘over there’ they will come get us here...(sound familiar). My grandfather in all his wisdom gave me THAT answer and for a moment I was disappointed...and then he stopped and stared me straight in the eye and said...but ‘don’t you believe it’. He went on to try and explain things that at the time were way over my head...I think I decided to end the conversation and go surfing...it was just too much for me to take in. However, his words have stayed with me to this day. I do not believe our government to tell us the real reasons we are a nation consumed with war. That was 40 years ago. The scars and wounds of Vietnam remain and I would like to know why can’t we learn from history. I have provided two links to videos that capture some of the feelings and images of that era and some facts about the war. They are beginning to sound eerily familiar....

Richard Rubenstein in his book ‘Reason to Kill’ states that the ‘political decision to go to war should be taken with the utmost caution, because while in a democracy we can fix most of our mistakes by throwing the rascals out or changing policies, we cannot resuscitate the dead or cure those permanently maimed in body or spirit’.

We have now been in Afghanistan for 10 years. The American people seem to have grown numb to the fact that we are a nation at war and that the violence continues...

If I am being asked to lay my son at the alter of the Military Industrial Complex there better be a dam good reason. So far the government has failed to answer me...and I am taking my Grandfather’s advice, “Don’t you Believe Them’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP4GaprkAJg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo&feature=fvw

The Heart of the Matter

2010-10-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

It happened...that dreaded news...my son a Special Operations Combat Controller...his best friend...another Red Beret was killed in Afghanistan...while relieved our family was spared...this time...my heart broke for his family...for all those who knew and loved him...Mark Forester...son, brother, friend, comrade...gone.

I turned on the news..the day Mark Forester died, September 29th, 2010, the week the WAR in Afghanistan entered it's 10th year...a DECADE...the top stories were about the Tea Party, the mid-term elections, the weather, the economy...and buried in the middle of the broadcast...like an after thought...oh yeah...by the way...there have been 1,200 killed in the Afghan war that is now entering a decade...no emotion...just a bit of 'news'...

Where is the OUTRAGE??? Or are we just too busy...with our comfortable lives to ask the hard questions of our elected leaders...they tell us that we 'need' to be in Afghanistan. Why I ask? We have been there for 10 years...are we going to accept another 10-years? How about another 20 years? Where will our society be then? How many Mother's will have to bury their sons?

I wrote this poem after a discussion with my son about the war...I wish we could have a war of words instead of bullets.

The War
Standing in opposition
Firmly grounded position
Who will live? Who will die?
Let the war of words fly
Over my head
Bullets of emotion
Exploding upon impact
Fragments remain
Scour through the rubble
Looking for forgiveness, understanding, and peace

The heart of the matter is this...'an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind', MK Gandhi

I pray for peace. I pray for my son. I pray for an end to violence in this world. I pray that killing and destruction will be replaced with kindness, forgiveness, and love.

Stay Tuned!!

2010-10-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Watch for new posts...ideas...and thoughts...coming soon! Please feel free to write your own thoughts about the war in Afghanistan. Please write your elected officials and urge them to end this war!!! NOW!!!